Between August 2018 and July 2019, the UK had more than 23,000 excess winter deaths. Such deaths are the direct and indirect outcomes of poverty-inducing policies that stretch the poorest in society financially, sometimes to the point of choosing between eating and heating.
We are now entering a foreseeable (and foreseen) fuel crisis, with a cost of living crisis that is likely to bypass the top 10% of earners in the UK, while exacerbating illness, hunger, mental health problems and of course excess winter deaths across other parts of society.
It is worth applying the definition of “social murder” to the recent decisions taken by the chancellor of the exchequer. Social murder is the outcome of deliberate policies that facilitate social, economic and political oppression, and which lead to untimely and ultimately avoidable and preventable deaths. While corporations and wealthy elites will benefit substantively from the decisions made in the mini-budget, some at the bottom of the increasingly disparate economy in Britain will lose their lives as a result.
Importantly, these are decisions that could have been made differently. In a socially just society, we would recognise this not only as ethically dubious, but actively criminal.
Victoria Canning
Head, Centre for the Study of Poverty and Social Justice, University of Bristol
Steve Tombs Professor of criminology, Open University
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